How to Change Your Body: The Science of Interoception and Healing Through Connection to Yourself and Others

Interoception and social connection are presented as key drivers of mental health and healing across conditions like depression, anxiety, addiction, and PTSD. The book argues that symptoms can be traced to disconnection from one’s body, and it frames interoception as an “eighth sense” underlying bodily awareness, attention regulation, and emotional attunement. Through peer-reviewed research and interviews with scientists, somatic workers, and artists, Saga Briggs links bodily awareness to mental well-being, using her own recovery journey away from alcohol dependence as a guiding thread. The synthesis also highlights interoception-centered practices and therapy approaches, including psychedelic-assisted therapy, synchronous movement, energy work, and other somatic modalities, as methods for rebuilding presence and reconnection with self and others.